Recycling Basics: How to Recycle Properly

Here's the final (and most practical) instalment of our three-part Recycling Basics series for Plastic Free July 2020 - How to Recycle Properly.

Whether or not the recycling you put in your bin actually gets recycled can be largely up to you, so let's make sure to do it right! One household's bin of dirty recycling/non-recyclables can contaminate an entire truck-full and cause everything to go to landfill.

Not only that, most recycling centres in New Zealand hand-sort recycling, so it's important to keep workers safe and keep hazardous materials out of the recycling bin.

Rinsing recycling and checking numbers is super important, but there's something better you can do even before then; avoid plastic packaging altogether! Let's all do better this Plastic Free July and beyond.

[fisherfamily]

Thanks Kate, informative as always. (Love how you smile when you talk!). Yes, the Councils do have a habit of changing which plastics they want to be recycled, including my own Council, and it's tricky trying to remember what the current situation is. Like you say, though, recycling is the last option and it's better to not buy it in the first place or reduce or reuse before recycling!

[Zzpkwy]

Thank you! Grey water usage is another form of recycling. It all helps.

[joycefung]

There is so much controversy with those UHT milk cartons. Tetra Pak has explained indepth that their cartons are recyclable and can be placed into our curb-side recycling bins. Though it isn't exactly "recycling" because it doesn't again become a milk carton but something else, the overall carbon footprint of consuming milk in cartons rather than in PET bottles are far more sustainable. Especially if the milk bottle lids are going to be thrown into landfills. At the end of the day we aren't recycling for the sake of recycling, but the sake of reducing our carbon emission and wastes.